My first step in the flippin' journey

I have finished putting the physical aspect of my classroom together and recorded some screencasts for the first week of classes.  My classes are over loaded right now.  Because of safety in the cooking lab, I limit enrollment to 20 students per class.  This means that some of the students will have to drop the class.  I wish I could accommodate everyone, but I need to always be mindful of the safety of my students. It will take a few days to sort all of that out.  During those days, I will be teaching students to use the tools that we will be using in class. I will post the links to the resources that I use at the end of the blog post.
The tool that the students will use most often is Edmodo.  I have used Edmodo to some extent for the past three years.  I describe Edmodo as Facebook for education.  It is a safe environment that allows students to post things to the class or to the teacher, access documents, take quizzes, etc.  Traditionally, I have demonstrated the features while students followed along and tried the features along with me.  This worked....well kind of.  The problem was that I couldn't see if students were keeping up or having problems because I had to be at my computer to demonstrate.  This year, I used Jing to record what was happening on my computer screen as I talked about it.  There are 12 videos that are all less than three minutes long.  Afterwatching each video, students have a task to complete for a grade.  Other than the bells ringing and someone knocking on the door, the videos are working fine.  After the recording the videos, I uploaded the videos to screencast.  This service costs me ten dollars a month.  I put a link to each video on Edmodo for the students to access.  With this method, they can work at their pace, rewatch the video if needed, and I can walk around the classroom to help students individually.  I feel that this will help lessen the frustration level for all of us.  It's going to be flippin' awesome!!!!

Resoures
www.edmodo.com
http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
http://www.screencast.com/

Join Me

I decided to make a change to my classes this year. I am flipping my classroom. If you are not familiar with the concept, here it is in a nutshell. In a traditional classroom setting, the teacher may lecture and give notes for a good portion of the class then gives an assignment for the students to do as homework. In a flipped classroom, through the use of technology, students view lectures or read materials at home and use class time to do the work.

Why have I decided to flip my classroom?

· Many of my students need to have jobs after school to help support their families. The flipped classroom will lessen the time that they need to spend outside of school to have an effective learning experience, thus reducing their stress level.

· The flipped classroom allows for a more project based learning experience.

· Should a student need individual attention on an assignment, I will be right there to help them. They won’t have to wait until the following day to get help.

· Learning moves from teacher-centered to student-centered.

Here is a link to a site that can explain it more.

http://jenniferwolfe.net/2013/04/flipped-learning-using-edmodo-an-innovative-approach-to-education.html


I am very excited to use this approach. Come join me on the journey. It’s going to be Flippin’ Awesome!!